Some Aboriginals I have known, and A band of pioneers. North–South railway line On Newland's return to Adelaide at the end of 1893, he began collecting material for a pamphlet on the Northern Territory, and the necessity for its being linked to the south by a railway. In 1899 he visited England and obtained the promise of support from financial interests in London, and returning to Australia obtained parliamentary sanction for the construction of a railway on the land grant system in 1902. His pamphlet, Land-Grant Railway across Australia: The Northern Territory of the State of South Australia as a Field for Enterprise and Capital, was published by the government at the end of that year. In 1906 he again went to England and succeeded in floating a company to undertake the building of the line. On his return he found that a Labor government under Thomas Price had come into power, and as the policy of Labor was opposed to building lines on the land grant system, Newland realized that nothing could be done at the time. Other interests He resumed his work on the development of a river port on the Murray, he had become a vice-president of the River Murray league in 1902, and the question was kept alive in 1903 and 1904 by holding public meetings. On 28 July 1904 Newland was elected president of the league, and the necessity of developing the Murray was kept steadily before the public for many years. A great step forward was made in 1914, when the Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Joseph Cook, pledged £1,000,000 from the Commonwealth if each of the three states interested would spend a similar amount, which is what occurred. Newland had many interests. In 1895–1900 and again in 1920–22 he was president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, and in 1906–23 president of the South Australian Zoological and Acclimatization Society. He deplored the European destruction of the environment and proposed that the Coorong area should be reserved for Aborigines and the land reforested. In 1922 he was appointed C.M.G. (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George). He had published a pamphlet in middle life, A Band of Pioneers, Old-Time Memories (2nd ed. 1919), which included an interesting account of the arrival of his family in 1839. This was incorporated in his Memoirs of Simpson Newland,